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Three Supercomputers Managed by the University of Tennessee Make the Top500 List of the World’s Fastest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

National Institute for Computational Sciences
A University of Tennessee/Oak Ridge National Laboratory Partnership

OAK RIDGE, Tenn.—Three supercomputers managed by the National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) of the University of Tennessee (UT) have ranked in the Top500 List of the world’s top supercomputers released today.

The supercomputers managed by NICS making the list in today’s announcement were Kraken (no. 25), Keeneland (no. 74), and Beacon (no. 253).

UT acquired the Kraken and Beacon systems through grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). One of the most powerful supercomputers in academia, Kraken has been a research workhorse for NSF since 2009, providing more computational hours than all other NSF resources combined.

The Beacon has the added distinction of being the most energy-efficient supercomputer on the Top500 List.

Today’s release of the Top500 List is the 40th edition of the ranking, which is published twice yearly. A special Top500 history exhibit is on display at the SC12 supercomputing conference in Salt Lake City, Nov. 10–16. Posters will feature each of the number-one systems from 20 years, or 40 lists.

The Top500 project provides a means of tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases its rankings on HPL, a benchmark written for distributed-memory computers.

The National Institute for Computational Sciences is a joint effort of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation. Located on the campus of ORNL, NICS is a major partner in NSF’s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, known as XSEDE.